Top Items:
Dsifry / Sifry's Alerts:
State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth — It's been 4 months since last October's State of the Blogosphere report, so it's time to update the numbers! For historical perspective, you can see earlier State of the Blogosphere reports from July 2005, from March 2005, and from October 2004.
John Markoff / New York Times:
Venture for Sharing Wi-Fi Draws Big-Name Backers — SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 5 — A telecommunications executive said on Sunday that he had received $21.7 million for what he called "a global network of shared Wi-Fi connections" from backers, including Google, the Internet phone service provider Skype …
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Om Malik / Om Malik on Broadband:Google, Skype Fund FON
Discussion:
B2Day, Rational rants, The Wireless Stock Blog, Daily Wireless, Search Engine Journal, FON Blog, tjacobi.com, robhyndman.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, IP Democracy, Tom Raftery's I.T. views, mathewingram.com/work, Dan Gillmor's blog, Mark Evans, The Mobile Technology Weblog, John Battelle's Searchblog, Gizmodo, VoIP Watch, Feld Thoughts, isen.blog, Paul Kedrosky's … and Scobleizer
Mylene Mangalindan / Wall Street Journal:
PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google — When Jeff Jordan learned last May that Web-search leader Google Inc. was building its own Internet-payment service, he reacted swiftly. — Mr. Jordan, who is president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal online-payments unit, immediately asked employees …
Discussion:
InsideGoogle, Guardian Unlimited, Geeking with Greg, Social Patterns and Geek News Central …
USA Today:
AOL to charge fee as way to cut spam — SAN FRANCISCO — America Online will begin charging businesses to send commercial e-mail to its users in the first wide-scale use of authenticated e-mail to reduce spam. But some marketers affected by the plan, set to start in several weeks …
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snyke.net:
AJAX Design Patterns — Snyke wrote this terribly early in the morning: — By now the entire World has heard about AJAX, even those who don't care about Web-Development have seen the potential of this new technology. Everybody is tired of endless introductions on how cool AJAX …
Discussion:
Gadgetopia
Michael Bazeley / SiliconBeat:
Catching up with Peerflix — Journalists too often fall into the hit-and-run reporting trap, where we write about a start-up and then rarely, if ever, check back on its progress. So when the Peerflix guys invited us in for a chat last week - nearly a year after our first posting on them - we accepted.
Discussion:
Things That
Robert Levine / New York Times:
Wave of Video Game Fatigue Afflicts Sales, Not Thumbs — In November, Activision released True Crime: New York City, a video game that seemed to have all the makings of a hit. It was the sequel to a well-received game, it had the violent aesthetic of the popular Grand Theft Auto series …
Steve Gillmor / Steve Gillmor's InfoRouter:
The Dog told me — I wrote this a few weeks ago before a trip to New York. While getting in and out of cabs or walking down the street, I lost or was relieved of my EVDO card, plunging me back into the darkness that preceded it. I sent this post, along with several additional paragraphs designed …
Discussion:
Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check
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Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Did Nvidia hire an army of message-board sock-puppets? — Nvidia stands accused of hiring online actors to create dozens of personae in online forums, where they won gamers' trust by talking about subjects unrelated to Nvidia's products, and then splurged in an orgy of sock-puppet boosterism of Nvidia's stuff.
Leander Kahney / Wired News:
Vaporware: Better Late Than Never — Ladies and gents, welcome to the 2005 Vaporware Awards — the prize that celebrates the tech products that were promised last year but never delivered. — We have a few surprises this year — wait 'til you find out the winner; you'll never guess what it is.
Sarah Lacy / Business Week:
Taking On the Database Giants — Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives — OPEN SOURCE'S NEW FRONTIERS>> … Rick Herman is awash in digital data.
Discussion:
Open Resource
Bob Tedeschi / New York Times:
Now for Sale Online, the Art of the Vacation — DONALD J. TRUMP, bargain hunter? — That's the idea behind the latest venture from the real estate mogul, reality series star and failed airline executive, who recently re-entered the travel industry with GoTrump.com, an agency that promises bargains …
Mike Grehan / ClickZ:
A Grand Plan for SEO: Readers Respond — › › › Search Results — My previous column asked readers for their thoughts on budgeting for small businesses. Your comments blew the sides out of my inbox! — I got tremendous response and some very interesting views …
Amos Gelb / Online Journalism Review:
New media age, new marketing strategies — 'Journalism business' doesn't have to be an oxymoron, three case studies show. — In summer 2005, the children of Washington, D.C., heard a sound familiar to generations before them, the ringing call of the ice cream truck. But this wasn't any ordinary ice cream truck.
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
The new way to launch your product or company — In the old days you needed a big marketing staff, a huge budget, a PR agency, an elaborate press event at a big hotel (with food and drinks), and the attention of the trade press writers to launch your product.
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